


The Case of the Leaked Video

by Ertal77



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Porn Video, Sort of meta-fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ertal77/pseuds/Ertal77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A private sex video of Sherlock and John comes up on YouTube somehow.</p><p>The inhabitants of 221B Baker Street are horrified... especially since they never have had sex together. The fact that nobody believes them makes it still worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monday

**Author's Note:**

> As I seem to be unable to write much lately, I thought that it would be better to post short chapters: this way you can expect an update every two days at most instead that once a month! ;)
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, and remember that I loooooove reviews.

**_Monday_ **

John Watson was a man of habits. As every morning since he moved to 221B Baker Street, he woke up at 8:00, took a shower, shaved, got dressed, prepared coffee and toasts for Sherlock and himself, and finally sat on his armchair, with his breakfast and his laptop. More or less at the same time that his laptop was rebooting, Sherlock used to appear through the sitting room doorframe, yawning and still in his pyjamas. He dropped on his own armchair, sighed dramatically, stretched his long arms above him (John’s eyes caught on that gesture, greedy, but turned again to his laptop and entered his blog), and at last, as an afterthought, took his cup of coffee and sipped it. He waited until John insisted somehow on his eating breakfast before grabbing his toast: any sign from the doctor sufficed, a word, a glare, even a raised brow; it was a pantomime and they both knew it, as they repeated the same parody day after day.

Today, however, Sherlock kept on sipping his black coffee, slightly annoyed because he wanted to eat his toast before it went cold, but John seemed too engrossed on his blog to indulge on their silent agreement.

“Sherlock”, said the doctor at last. The detective thought that it was enough sign for him and took his toast from the plate. It was already prepared, with butter and jam spread exactly how he liked. John raised his eyes from his laptop and repeated: “Sherlock. Have you uploaded any video to YouTube?”

“No, why?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, please”. Sherlock chewed exaggeratedly, with his mouth half open, frowning and glaring to John. The doctor puffed, annoyed, and his friend swallowed and stuck out his tongue to him. John shook his head. “Why do I always forget that I live with a toddler?”

“You were saying?”

“There are two comments on my blog about a YouTube video.”

“What do they say?”

John read them aloud. They were vague; the first said “Congratulations on that video, it made my day!”, and the second “Are you going to post more YouTube videos?” Sadly, any link was attached to said comments, so John was kept in blank. Sherlock raised a brow and stood up, not bothering on taking his empty cup or plate with him.

“I am sure you are able to do a YouTube search on your own, John; you don’t need me for that”.

And with that, he left the sitting room. John sighed (why he ever hoped Sherlock was useful _for him_ , it was a mystery on its own), but started to do exactly what Sherlock had suggested, of course: it had been his first thought on reading the comments, after all. But his phone went off at that very moment, and he forgot momentarily all about the video.

“Hello, Greg! Yes, Sherlock is up… I think he’s showering. Oh? Oh! ...Yes, I think he might be interested. I will drag him up to Scotland Yard as soon as he is presentable. See you, then!”

Less than an hour later, they were stepping in the Scotland Yard premises, and Sherlock looked indeed presentable: John watched him with the corner of his eye, marvelling on how that gorgeous and elegant man, looking so smooth and sexy in his black suit and tight blue shirt, could be the same lazy berk with the manners of an uneducated teenager of that morning. The usual faces turned to look at them, as always. In fact, John noticed a little more of attention today. Sherlock might be exuding more sexiness than usually, then.

They arrived to Lestrade’s office and all seemed the same as always again. The Yard needed Sherlock’s help with a chain of related robberies; it wasn’t very interesting, but the thieves were slippery enough to have succeeded in seven holdups so far, all of them in wealthy flats in the centre at plain daylight. John’s mind wandered as Sherlock asked about the robberies details; it all seemed to fall into the same pleasant routine these days. In fact, his only work would be following Sherlock to the crime scene and being around in case his friend needed backup, interviewing someone or even just protecting him from other people’s rudeness. Since he worked with Sherlock, Donovan’s remarks have lowered, for instance. And he was the only one who talked to Anderson now. John was glad for it; he felt slightly hurt every time that Sherlock was forced to hear any jibe or angry remark.

The rest of the day went by as planned: they visited the three last flats robbed, and afterwards John went to interview the manager of the security company that was in charge of five from the seven flats, while Sherlock went to Barts to analyze a drop of mud found in the balcony of the last crime scene. He popped in the nearest Tesco before taking the tube on his way home. Sherlock hadn’t arrived yet, but he didn’t have any new text from him, so he put a frozen pizza on the oven and prepared a salad: as he had predicted, Sherlock arrived home exactly when the pizza was ready. They commented the day’s outcomes over dinner (John thought the security company was involved on the robberies; Sherlock disagreed. He needed more data, so he proposed to visit the rest of flats the next day). After that, John washed the dishes while Sherlock played the violin for him: something nice that didn’t sound as a cat in heat at all. Then he asked his flatmate if he would mind to watch a film on the telly, and dropped on the sofa with a beer. Sherlock grunted a bit, but after a short hesitation he tucked his violin with loving care and sat on the sofa, next to John. Five minutes later, he was already lying with his feet over his friend’s lap. John didn’t mind at all.

In fact, John wondered, he found those routines incredibly pleasant and appealing. He couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, that he felt so relaxed and happy about his daily life. And his friend (John thought, glancing sidewards to Sherlock) looked accordingly pleased with their flat and work agreement. John stared with undisguised fondness the smug grin of his friend every time he caught a plot hole on the film, and his startled frown when he couldn’t follow the chain of emotions that put the characters into action.

“That… That doesn’t make sense! Why would anybody react that way? This film is the most stupid and unrealistic recording I’ve ever seen!!”, he kept exclaiming.

John giggled and petted Sherlock’s calves.

“Relax, Sherlock, it’s only a film. It doesn’t have to be _that_ realistic, it’s all about making us ponder a question, react…”

“Well, my reaction is that we should burn the studios. Then they couldn’t film those horrors any more.”

John laughed, told Smaug to keep the fire to himself and stood up in order to get ready to bed.

‘Another good day in 221B Baker Street’, thought with a smile while he started to feel sleep winning over him. If only he would have known then what the next days would bring…

 

 

 


	2. Tuesday

**_Tuesday_ **

The next morning, the alarm clock went off at eight o’clock and John opened his eyes and smiled at the quietness and the golden morning light of his bedroom. He got up, showered, shaved, got dressed, prepared breakfast and sat on the living room with his laptop and his coffee and toasts… exactly as he did every day.

However, that particular Tuesday, when his flatmate stepped in the sitting room (stretching lazily, as he had noticed how John used to look at him when he did so), sat on his armchair and then he was thoroughly ignored by John. Sherlock raised a brow but, before starting to feel annoyed, he noticed that John was ignoring even his own breakfast: his toasts lay on the plate, forgotten, and his cup of white coffee was frozen in his hand, half way towards his mouth.

“John?”

The doctor raised his eyes to look at him, startled, as if he hadn’t noticed before Sherlock’s presence in the room. The detective moved pointedly his brows, urging for an answer. John cleared his throat, realised that he had been about sipping his coffee and finished that action. His friend rolled his eyes, impatient.

“Alright”, John said, at last, nipping his lower lip. “There are forty comments on my blog this morning.”

Sherlock cocked his head, but said nothing.

“And”, John added, “all those comments are about a video someone has uploaded to YouTube. A video with us… eh… having ‘sexy times’, it seems”.

Sherlock frowned, but still said nothing. John abandoned his careful tone and raised his voice, feeling his anger taking over.

“A video with us having sex, Sherlock! Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Is the manip any good?”

“What?!”

“I said: Is the manip any good? Don’t make me repeat myself, John; you know how I hate it. As we have never had sex, this is obviously a manipulation done by one of the moronic fans of your blog. Therefore, this is ultimately your fault, insomuch as you were the one who had the asinine idea of writing an idealised version of our cases and induced an inordinately amount of people to follow our deeds and become what you would call ‘ _our fans_ ’. You really have no right to complain when they come out with a manipulation of our faces on some porn video and it finishes running free on the internet.”

“What?!”, John repeated. Sherlock deepened his frown, and the doctor realised he was parroting. “Sorry. I mean, are you suggesting that it is my fault? Seriously, Sherlock…!”

“Have you watched it already?”

“What?!”

Sherlock placed his mug on top of the empty breakfast plate with much more force than the necessary, his mouth a tight line.

“Sorry, sorry!! But, really, do you want to actually watch it? I don’t think that it’s…”

The detective reached for John’s laptop with a fast movement.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, let’s finish with it! We have a thief to catch today, remember? We cannot lose more time with this nonsense.”

Sherlock’s nimble fingers flew over the keyboard. John got up and came nearer his friend, resting his arms on the back of Sherlock’s armchair. As soon as the detective typed “Sherlock Holmes” on the YouTube searcher, a video called “Sherlock Holmes and his blogger having sex” appeared on top of the results, smashing down the painful two minutes long interview he had conceded to the BBC2 after one particular famous case. _That_ made Sherlock blush in anger. John hid his grin behind his hand and coughed.

“Well, it was easy to find. I should have done it yesterday. Come on, click on it: as you say, let’s finish with it.”

Sherlock did it.

The video was filmed, with an utter lack of imagination, on a bedroom.

“That’s not my bedroom. Not yours”, Sherlock stated.

“What, were you afraid the video came from Mycroft’s recordings?”, John smirked, leaning next to his friend’s head to have a better view of the screen.

Sherlock’s eyes widened, but then he turned again his attention to the video and seemed to relax.

“And that’s not my body. Look at those abdominals! This man is too thin for those muscles, don’t you think? I’m better shaped than that”.

John was too busy staring, open-mouthed, as a man with his face straddled a naked almost-Sherlock and snogged him thoroughly. His face, he thought, but a body at least ten years younger than his, and much more toned and tanned. After a minute of kissing, the pseudo-John started to rub against pseudo-Sherlock’s hard prick, and John couldn’t help to notice with envy the length of his counterpart on the screen. His own length, however, began to throb and harden, as envious as his owner of the actions of the false John. The Sherlock on the screen (beautiful, sensual as a cat, sexy as hell) moaned, and the Sherlock that was sitting just inches from him snorted. The false John lowered his body to pepper his partner’s smooth chest with tender kisses, slowly, and the real John felt a most definite heat on his groin. He readjusted himself as carefully as he could, but Sherlock seemed oblivious to his reaction, engrossed on the laptop screen with a disdainful smirk on his face.

“Look there, John, behind my neck! I can see where they have cut and pasted my face. Can you see it?”

What John could see (‘OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod’) was pseudo-John pushing pseudo-Sherlock thighs open and up, hanging on mid air, and starting to rub two fingers over his hole, with movements that were more taunting and sensual than real strokes. But after a moment, the tip of his index entered his partner’s body, and John groaned in unison with the Sherlock on the screen. Absolutely embarrassed, he closed his mouth tightly, noticing the glare from his friend but refusing to acknowledge anything, his eyes set firmly on the screen.

“There’s no need to watch the rest of it if it makes you feel uncomfortable, John. I think we have got the idea.”

“It’s not really that long, Sherlock… But as you wish, of course. Are you embarrassed by it?”

“Embarrassed? Sex is only physical stimulus and responses, nothing to feel embarrassed about. Moreover, those- he signalled the laptop on his knees- are _not_ you and me having sex.

As his eyes followed the direction of his signalling index, though, got completely caught on the two fingers that pumped inside his counterpart’s body, while his own false face moaned loud and writhed from side to side. There was no further discussion about stop watching the video.

“God, this manip is amazing”, John commented, “look at your face there!”

“The range of expressions is not very ample”, grunted Sherlock, frowning again, trying to keep his aloof façade in place. “They must have cut them from a range of public appearances, but they all have been very short, only seconds each time.”

“There was that press conference in May, remember? You didn’t talk much, but you sat at the table next to Lestrade for half an hour, and they broadcasted most of it on BBC4.”

Sherlock bit his lower lip, watching entranced how the false John on the screen grabbed one of the other Sherlock’s legs, put it over his own shoulder and positioned himself in order to penetrate his partner.

“…Right”, he answered at last. “Yes, I’ve recognised some of my expressions from that press conference.”

Both of them watched in silence as the pseudo-John started to thrust into the pseudo-Sherlock’s body. The angle give them a good view of the man’s ass (taut and hard), and his testicles dancing rhythmically with his pumps. John noticed that, now that the man’s face was hidden, it was more evident that it wasn’t him: the hair was blonder, with only a few grey threads on his sideburns, and his back was beautifully muscled and powerful. He had never been like that, not even in his army days; his own body was more compact and lean, with evidence of muscles on his arms and legs, but it was obvious that the man on the screen went regularly to a gym.

A minute later, the false John placed the other leg of his partner over his other shoulder, bending him and obscuring the view of the screen Sherlock (John felt a little disappointed). The hypnotic speed of his thrusts, though, made for the lack of vision. After a few moments, however, they changed positions: pseudo-Sherlock rolled over and lay on his knees and forearms and pseudo-John didn’t waste any time in penetrating him again from behind. John was sweating by now, his erection was starting to be too painful to be confined inside his jeans, and he couldn’t understand how Sherlock could be watching it with such detachment and restraint. He peeped furtively to his friend’s groin and ha! There it was! Sherlock’s hand was covering it, and John would bet his dog tags that _there_ was an erection. His bet was guaranteed when he felt Sherlock shifting on his armchair, his hand still on his lap.

But, come on! Even Sherlock had to be affected; even though it was not them, they had a nice close-up of a huge cock ramming against the other man’s hole, balls dancing a _prestissimo_ right now, the muscles of the man’s back and bum moving appealingly, and Sherlock’s digitalized groans and small cries filled the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.

It all ended very fast after that: the false John gripped his partner’s cock, and just a few strong pumps made him come, at the same time that he pulled out from the false Sherlock’s body, took the condom out and came over his friend pale lower back. John could almost smell the mixed cums. He realised that he was staring the now black screen with his mouth open. He closed it and licked his lips.

“Wow. That was…”, he started, but didn’t know what else to say.

Sherlock sighed and changed again from ‘full screen’ mode to normal size.

“Almost 1500 views at the moment. Alright, we have to decide what is to be done. We can just ask the user, ‘ilovesherlockandjohn’, how original, to remove the video, or we can denounce it to YouTube.”

“Right”. John adjusted himself, but he was sure his prick would have imprinted the mark of the damned zip until the next day. “I would rather just ask. If they don’t remove it in twenty four hours, then we denounce. What do you think?”

Sherlock nodded. Despite his normal tone of voice, his cheeks were still flushed.

“I’ll leave you to it. I still have to shower, and I want to see the rest of crime scenes today.”

He stood up carefully, placing the laptop on John’s armchair, aware of not facing his friend while he did it. John watched him disappear through the bathroom door with a smug grin.

The rest of the day was more or less as planned: they visited the four flats that they couldn’t see the day before, John made pictures, Sherlock analysed the possible entry points but, as these flats were entered some days ago, he couldn’t find much new information. They popped in to Barts on their way back home, to pick up the outcome of the mud analysis.

John saw his friend, Mike Stamford, as his huge body approached him and greeted him with half a hug. Mike looked stunningly happy.

“Well, John! I think congratulations are in order!”

The army doctor felt his whole face blush. The video. Mike Stamford, of all his friends, had to have seen the bloody video.

“It wasn’t us, Mike. That video is a fake, a manip.”

Mike winked, mischievously.

“Whatever you say, old chap.”

John turned, looking for Sherlock, but he obviously missed every comment about them being a couple. John sighed, patiently, and invited Mike a coffee in the Hospital cafeteria, provided he skipped that topic. Sherlock didn’t need him to cope with the lab assistants, after all.

At dinner time (veg lasagne from Tesco), Sherlock was grumpy because the mud outcome had been too generic to isolate an area of origin. John still believed that the security company was involved, and Sherlock grunted, got up from the kitchen table, and refused to talk during the rest of the evening, staring moodily to the laptop ( _his_ laptop, for a change). John counted up to ten, breathing deeply, and then proceeded to clear the table, wash the dishes and sit next to his flatmate with his own laptop. It was barely ten o’clock when he got bored and said goodnight, carrying his laptop upstairs with him.

Once alone, he remembered the video again. He checked it: it was gone. Fine. He sent a whatsapp to Sherlock letting him know the news, received a plain ‘OK’ as answer, and nested in his bed to read for a couple of hours. When he finally turned off the light, half asleep already, he thought that, in fact, it was a pity the video had been removed. He would have liked to watch it again.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Wednesday

**_Wednesday_ **

Come morning, John got up at eight o’clock, had a shower, shaved… Well, you get the idea by now. But that day, when he stepped in his sitting room with their breakfast balancing precariously on a tray, his flatmate was already there. He managed to place the breakfast on the side table between the armchairs, spilling just a small amount of the content of the cups (the saucers were now soaking in coffee, but that was everyday’s trifle: he wasn’t a waiter after all). He approached his flatmate with a fond smile on his face. It wasn’t that Sherlock had passed the night thinking, experimenting or researching on his laptop, even though there had been some of that too, evidently. But the detective had finally succumbed to sleep and there he was, lying on the sofa, completely dressed in his now crumpled black suit, with a trickle of slobber going down his chin, and the trace of auburn stubble on his face. John thought he looked so vulnerable and cute that it was a shame having to waking him up.

“Sherlock”, John whispered, a hand on his flatmate’s shoulder, patting instead of shaking. “It’s half past eight”.

The detective grunted and rolled over to face the back of the sofa. Alright, perhaps a bit of shoulder-shaking was in order.

“Coffee and toasts ready, Sherlock! Come on, they will get cold”.

Sherlock groaned, and when he finally answered, his voice came muffled by the cushions.

“Leave me alone. I don’t have anything to do today. We don’t have enough evidence to follow the robberies case, and we don’t have any other case at the moment. So until Lestrade comes up with something else, let me sleep or be prepared to provide me with distraction.”

“Isn’t breakfast enough distraction?”

The answer was another grunt.

John threw in the towel and decided to have breakfast alone. He took his laptop, rebooted it and drank the first sip of delicious hot coffee as he entered his blog. He choked and spat the coffee all over his lap. Sherlock deigned to raise his head from the cushions and turned to look at John. John looked back at him.

“Ninety-one comments on my blog”.

Sherlock stood up and came nearer John, stepping over the creaking coffee table, and started to read over his friend’s shoulder.

“Another person has uploaded the video again”.

“So it seems”.

John opened YouTube, and typed ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in the searcher. The damned video was on top of the results again. He swore, and clicked on it. The now familiar scene began, but both pairs of eyes were fixed on the user name, the views counter and the comments. It was a different user, and the views were 900 and counting: not bad for a video uploaded just a few hours ago. John turned back to look at Sherlock, and was surprised by the manic grin of his flatmate.

“Yesssss…”, Sherlock’s deep voice rumbled. “Exactly what I needed on a dull day. Give it to me”.

John passed him the laptop and ate his breakfast; Sherlock only drank his coffee, too concentrated on whatever he was doing. After a while, the doctor coughed to attract his friend’s attention.

“So”, he said. “We are denouncing, right?”

Sherlock ignored him. John sighed, cleared the breakfast and went back to his bedroom for a change of clothes. When he came downstairs again, at least he got a mildly surprised look from his friend. John was wearing a tracksuit: given that Sherlock had nothing to do that day, he didn’t have anything to do either, so he had decided to go jogging to the park. He waved Sherlock goodbye.

“A bit more conscious of our body now, are we?”, grinned the detective.

John shut the door with a bang, blushing.

He ran towards the nearby Regent’s park, enjoying the fresh air and smiling every time he crossed another jogger. After a while, he did push-ups and crunches until all his body was aching. He jogged lightly back home, stopping at a Café Nero for a frozen yoghurt, and when he finally arrived home his mood was quite cheerful. He noticed, satisfied, that Sherlock had showered and changed clothes in his absence, and that his mood seemed much better than before, too.

“Well, how was it, then?”, he asked. “Have you denounced the vid?”

Sherlock smirked.

“Oh, I have done more than that! I have denounced the user, I have left comments in all the other videos they have uploaded, I have found the original porn video they used to make the manip, and contacted the producers to let them know the use it’s being given to their video. And”, here Sherlock made a dramatic pause, his smirk turning into a true smile when he finally made eye contact with his friend, “you’ve got exactly ten minutes to have a shower. Lestrade has texted, another break-in! I’ve told him we would be there at one o’clock: that’s in thirty minutes. What are you doing still here? Go and get ready! You can’t accompany me to a crime scene in a sweated tracksuit!”

John almost ran to the bathroom, feeling his flatmate’s gleaming joy spreading through him.

Exactly thirty minutes later, they stepped out the cab and strode towards the new crime scene: an old but luxurious flat in Fleet Street. John had always wondered who might live over those Victorian banks, and there it was: a journalist and a restaurant owner, in their early forties, no kids. John just peeped with envy behind every room, trying to look professional (what kind of professional? He still hadn’t found the answer. Was ‘consulting detective assistant’ an actual job?). Sherlock, meanwhile, examined with his magnifier every little detail of the flat. He clucked his tongue, upset. When he had checked absolutely everything, still frowning, he interviewed the charwoman, who had been the one to discover the robbery a couple of hours ago. John stood a step behind the detective, with his pen and his notebook: not that Sherlock needed any written note, but John felt easier to turn in his ‘assistant’ persona with something in his hands. While he pretended to listen and take notes, he noticed instead the unusual amount of smirking behind him. He turned, with a glare… only to see that Donovan and the other officer hid their laughs behind their hands and tried to avoid looking him in the eye. But then Donovan glanced… the rest of him, in a very pointed way, and John felt his cheeks hot again.

He reached Sherlock’s sleeved and mumbled:

“Sherlock, we have to go. Remember… they are expecting us, we are in a hurry”.

The detective raised a brow, half turning to face him, and let the poor nervous cleaner go. John was in part embarrassed, and in part raging, and it was easy to deduce which was the reason. He faced Donovan and his mate while the doctor escaped to the hall and the lift.

“I really hope you two haven’t bothered John with that stupid video”, he said, showing his teeth, “And, believe me, I will know if you have, and I’ll make sure you get as annoyed as John next time we meet”.

Donovan raised his chin to answer Sherlock.

“We haven’t said anything to your boyfriend, freak. It’s not our fault he feels embarrassed, I bet it was your idea to film yourselves… Can’t do anything by halves, can you?”

“Only somebody with your tiny brain would mistake that clumsy manip with a real recording, Donovan. But perhaps it will give Anderson some ideas for your next encounter.”

Donovan opened her mouth to retort something, really angry now, but Sherlock cut her with a:

“Just leave John out of this!”, and a dramatic exit to the hall.

John was waiting for him leaning against the lift, breathing deeply. He looked more composed now.

“You okay?”

John nodded.

“Just let’s go home. Please”.

The doctor passed the rest of the afternoon cooking; he decided it was what he needed in order to relax, so he googled a couple of recipes and secluded himself at the kitchen until dinner time. When he came out (with a chicken curry, mushroom Tom Yum and a carrot cake), Sherlock just sighed and dropped himself on the chair, helping himself a good ration of every dish.

“You were right on a thing, John: the robberies are an inside job. It’s not the security company, though, because there is no link between the two companies involved, and in fact the robberies are costing them a lot of money, so there’s no motive, apparent or not. And God, this tastes amazing! Why do we ever eat frozen or precooked food?”

“Because you don’t usually allow me two hours to cook dinner, and I’m not usually in the mood to cook?”, smiled John.

“We should remedy that”.

The conversation turned again to the case: Sherlock hadn’t found anything conducting to identify the thieves, and was now investigating the rest of companies that provided any kind of services to the victims. But none of them coincided in all the cases.

Sherlock avoided in purpose to refer to the brief conversation with Donovan, or in fact any mention of the stupid video. John read it between lines, of course, and was glad for it. He managed to settle Sherlock in front of the telly once more, this time letting his friend choose the program. They shouted to the contestants of a silly competition, and then laughed together when the dumbness of the competitors was simply too much for them (and to think that he didn’t notice that before Sherlock, thought John).

All in all, not a bad day. John climbed to his bedroom tired but smiling. He rebooted his laptop again before turning his bed lamp off. He checked YouTube: the video had been removed. Efficient and quick YouTube, smiled John, half asleep already. Then he took a final look to his blog, thinking about writing an entry with an explanation. Tomorrow.

He opened his eyes wide, startled: his blog had won 1200 followers since the previous day. And there were more than two hundred comments. He felt suddenly tired and decided that all that mess could be dealt tomorrow. Tomorrow would be fine, yes.

With a little of luck, a nuclear bomb would explode at YouTube headquarters and all the videos hosted would be deleted from the internet. Yes, all kind of things could happen before tomorrow.

 

 

 

 


	4. Thursday

**_Thursday_ **

John woke up with a start. He reached for his mobile in the darkness and checked the time: still 6 in the morning. Too fucking early!, he muttered. But as there was no way he was falling asleep again, John sighed and got up. Instead of going through all his morning routines, he decided that caffeine was vital right away. While he waited for the coffee machine to get ready, he heard a noise coming from their dark sitting room. He poked his head out the glass doors and, indeed, there was a big consulting detective curled on the sofa. At least, thought John with a grin, Sherlock has deigned to change into his pyjamas that night. He prepared two mugs of coffee and went to sit on the side table in front of his sleeping flatmate. He noticed, smiling so wide that it almost hurt, the lovely curve of Sherlock’s cheekbones and the defined and manly shape of his nose. He placed the mugs next to him and grabbed Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Sherlock. Sherlock!”

His friend opened an eye, startled. On seeing John, he just made a guttural low sound.

“You should go to bed, Sherlock; it’s still very early. A couple of hours in your bed would do wonders to your back. But there’s coffee, too, if you’d rather prefer”.

Sherlock reached blindly for his mug; John giggled as he helped him. After the first sip, however, Sherlock seemed to turn again to himself and started to talk as fast as his awake self.

“I have the case almost wrapped, John: it was so obvious, in fact! I might have been too distracted to realise the truth in front of my eyes. But now I only have to wait until some people answer my emails, and Lestrade can close successfully another case.”

“Really? You weren’t close to a conclusion last night!”

“Ah, but that was last night! I only needed some peace of mind and time to think…” Suddenly, he opened his eyes wide. “John… Don’t read your blog”.

“What? Why?”

“Just don’t. Do as I say!”

Sherlock sat up and turned to reach for John’s laptop, but John was faster and took it from the chair it was sitting on. Sherlock caught the laptop from the other side, and they struggled for a while for the appliance. At last, John resorted to pretend he was giving in, only to throw himself on top of Sherlock and start tickling him. Sherlock defended himself with blind kicks, but John won over the laptop and ran towards the kitchen with it. He typed his blog’s address, trying to regain his breath, when Sherlock came on his heels but froze in the doorframe, his face an unreadable mask (but that nerve trembling on his jaw was unmistakable for John: it was the same face that Sherlock wore when he knew John was about to open the fridge and find something that would arise some yelling).

John took a fast glance to the more than a thousand comments on his blog. He was prepared for that, but he had to bit his lip to avoid laughing when he saw that a great deal of them where from Sherlock!

“Sherlock”, he said in a calmer voice. “Have you passed the night arguing with my blog followers?”

Sherlock blinked, hesitant.

“Yes?”, he said at last.

John couldn’t help but to laugh at that.

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen you do!”

“You didn’t see me; I made sure of waiting until you went to bed.”

John glared at him, and then turned his attention back to the comments.

“Why did you even do that? Were you trying to defend my honour?”

Sherlock shifted anxiously and left the kitchen.

“Hey! Don’t leave! It’s okay, you idiot! Just… unnecessary, and possibly the most stupidly emotional thing you have ever done… but it’s okay! Look, the amount of followers has increased since last night. And I have explained in my stories how you are, so your reaction surely didn’t come as a shock to anybody.”

Sherlock was curling on the sofa again, hugging the cushion. John added, sitting by his side:

“And the video has been removed, and YouTube won’t allow it again on the site. Just give it a bit of time, and everybody will forget about it. I promise.”

Sherlock didn’t answer, but he seemed relieved now that he knew John wasn’t freaking out. So when John asked for more details about the case, he complied gladly, and they sat down at the kitchen with a good breakfast and their laptops.

Lestrade popped in at nine in the morning, and they had barely moved. He handed Sherlock the additional reports the detective had demanded via email, and smiled slyly looking from one to the other.

“Oh, no, Greg, you too?”, John groaned, rubbing his face.

“Not my fault at all! You are giving another sense to the term “internet phenomenon”! God, when I saw those gifs…”

Both heads snapped in his direction.

“Those… what?”, John muttered.

Lestrade looked uncomfortable now, but there wasn’t any chance for him to recoil. None at all.

“The… gifs. An officer showed them to me; there’s that page, Tumblr, and it’s literally wallpapered with gifs of you two…”

John felt the heat on his face; in fact, he felt as if he was going to explode from anger. Sherlock, on the other hand, looked calm, and his reaction was just typing the offending new name on his browser.

“No, without an ‘e’ on the last syllable… Like that, yes.”

John stood up and watched Sherlock’s laptop with wide eyes. He didn’t know what exactly he was looking at.

“Tumblr is a website that hosts blogs…”, Lestrade explained. “They are usually from teenagers, don’t get so upset… I mean, they don’t seem to be potential clients of yours…”

John raised his eyebrows.

“ _That_ doesn’t seem exactly teenagers’ diaries, or things have changed a lot from when I was in my teens…”

Lestrade took a peek, grinned, and then noticed John’s angry eyes fixed on him and tried to look embarrassed. Sherlock closed the laptop’s lid with a hand.

“Well, thank you for the information and the reports. Now, if you please, I think you know exactly where the door is.”

John was so bewildered that he didn’t even apologise to Lestrade as he would have done normally. He waved him goodbye, and joined Sherlock in the search of those gifs extracted from the manip. There were only two, thank God, but they were repeated again, and again, and again on Tumblr.

The rest of the day… well, it wasn’t very usual or very peaceful. John wrote a long entry on his blog, explaining in detail what happened, and how distressed he felt about it. He deleted all the previous comments on the matter. As the day went by, however, new comments appeared, as a neverending dripping, and at first he tried to answer all of them, but then he got tired and the comments were so repetitive that he gave up. Harry sent a worried comment in the afternoon.

“Why are all these people harassing you, Johnny?”

Then she had seen the gifs, or perhaps a copy of the video that they hadn’t found, who knows, and commented again:

“SO THAT’S WHAT YOUR DETECTIVE AND YOU DO IN YOUR FREE TIME? Such a naughty boy, Johnny, and you always with that stupid “I’m not gay” singsong… :P Mom will be happy to see you settling down, though!”

“What??!”, John said aloud.

He took his phone and had a long and enervating conversation with his sister. He hung up even angrier: stubborn Harry didn’t believe a word of what he said, and insisted of being offended because she had to find out about his relationship that way…

Sherlock decided to chase the source of their woes again: he found the Tumblr user who had isolated the gifs from the video and denounced to the website. Then he left acidic comments to all the blogs that had reblogged the damn thing. He felt a little better after it, but when he opened his mouth to make a cheerful comment to John, his friend was all but throwing fire through his nose, so he let him be.

They ate their dinner (precooked spaghetti carbonara from Tesco, _again_ ) in tense silence. Afterwards, they sat down on the sofa with their laptops (nothing worthy on the telly). Some funny cat videos and criminal articles later, Sherlock clicked on one of their gifs. John looked askance at it.

“It could be worse”, Sherlock said, trying to sound objective to a gif of him being mightily fingered by John.

“Yes”, John agreed, “it could be me the one being fucked”.

Sherlock glared at him, his mouth a tight straight line. John hurried to fix his slip:

“I mean, if it was me, it would look half as sexy as it looks now”.

His friend pale cheeks blushed all of a sudden, but his mouth relaxed visibly.

“If that was a compliment, John Watson… well, it was one of the weirdest compliments that have ever been directed at me”.

“Now you have me wondering what the weirdest one was!”, John grinned.

The tension was lighter somehow, but Sherlock stood up with his laptop, still blushing.

“I think I will do an early retire tonight; the sofa is comfortable, but my back is complaining, as you predicted. Good night.”

John decided he could keep on reading in bed, so he took his laptop upstairs and lay snugly over the covers. Now that he was alone, he opened the document where he had filed last night’s deleted comments. He read them again, skipping most of them but focusing in Sherlock’s interventions. He smiled fondly when the first aloof and patronizing comments changed the tone, as Sherlock turned angrier, becoming childish, insulting and oddly protective when they mentioned John. It was a new face of his friend, and one that John found strangely appealing.

He took a fast and guilty glance to his closed door, and then looked for the two gifs again. The first was the one with a fingered and mute-moaning Sherlock (“And oh, that’s hot!”, John thought), and the second had him (well, not _him_ , but a bit of imagination could help there) fucking Sherlock from behind, slamming into his arse with mighty pumps… Pumps that John was emulating into his hand right now, unable to stop, the two gifs running on a loop on his screen. The false Sherlock was about to come in the second gif, and John regretted that the gifs didn’t have sound. His friend’s face, though, contorted and with his eyes closed tight, brought to his mind the load groans of the original video, and the shot of pleasure almost came as a surprise, powerful and satisfying. He cleaned himself, closed his laptop and turned off the light with a smile, refusing to feel any kind of guilt.

 

 

 

 


	5. Friday

**_Friday_ **

The alarm of John’s phone went off at eight o’clock, as every morning. He opened his eyes, sighed and rebooted his laptop before even getting up from bed. He sat up and took a quick look to his blog comments: over five hundred since last afternoon, and only a quarter of them seemed to have read and understood his explanation about the video and the gifs. He deleted all of them, angrier each moment, and turned the comments off the whole blog.

Only then he went through his morning rituals, trying to make them last: he knew these routine moments would be the most peaceful ones in his day.

When he appeared in his sitting room with two mugs of coffee and a plate full of toasts in delicate balance, he was surprised to find his flatmate already composed, dressed and sitting on his armchair. He avoided to look at him while he placed their breakfast on the side table and settled himself in his own armchair; he could feel Sherlock’s frown even without looking at him.

“Anything wrong?”

“Anything wrong that’s new. Eat your toast before it turns cold, Sherlock.”

They ate their breakfast in silence for a while, each one reading from their laptops, until Sherlock exclaimed:

“Oh, look, that’s new! We have fanarts, now.”

John snapped into attention and his friend turned his laptop so John could see the screen.

“They are drawings made by our fans.”

“Yeah, I get it, thank you!”, John grunted.

Oh, God, that was… Well, the drawings were really good, and it was obvious that someone had spent a good deal of time making them, because they were no doodles, and some were even in full colour. So the quality wasn’t the issue, no. It was the content what made John blush. And it might have gone during all the week, because there were dozens. Dozens of nicely done drawings showing John and Sherlock having sex in every known posture. Okay, to be honest a few of them only showed them kissing, but he was too pissed off by now to make any difference.

He ran upstairs and came back minutes later with a video camera. Sherlock shoot him a questioning look.

“We are going to post our own video.”

Sherlock looked horrified.

“No, not that kind of video!”. Sherlock relaxed visibly. “A YouTube video explaining our relationship to those idiots, and asking them to stop seeing things that aren’t there.”

The detective just arched an eyebrow.

“I don’t think it will stop them… Do you want to see the response that Tumblr has sent me? They apologize, but basically they say that they don’t have any control on the blogs contents, and the only thing that we can do is ask the blog’s owners to take it down, nicely. But alright, if it makes you feel better, we’ll film that video.”

And they did. John felt quite proud of the outcome: it was clear, direct, it had the right faces and bodies in it, and everybody would notice how the ones in the other video weren’t them, and perhaps, only perhaps, would get the point. They uploaded it to YouTube and decided it was time to get back to work: Sherlock still had a loose end to close the robberies case, after all.

It was already early afternoon when they arrived to a cleaning service company; according to his reports, they have worked with only one of the victims, so John didn’t know exactly what were they doing there. It became clear the moment Sherlock opened his mouth, of course (and when not?).

“Has this man ever worked for your company?”, he asked as soon as the manager let them in his office.

The manager frown, and John thought they were about to be threw out of there, but as soon as Sherlock produced his notebook with a written name, the man’s face changed to astonishment.

“Why? What has he done now?”

Sherlock grinned. They sat down and the manager offered them tea and an explanation. That man (one Kenny Lombard) had worked with them, indeed, for a couple of years, until a month before. He was dismissed after some customers complained of his continuing filching. Anything important, no money or valuables involved, but still. Kenny got really angry. As far as the manager knew, he was now working for another cleaning service. And yes, he had cleaned one of the victims’ flats.

Sherlock stepped the street with a smug smirk on his face. He stopped a cab, John hastening to avoid being left behind (it wouldn’t be the first time, after all).

“New Scotland Yard”, Sherlock announced.

“So”, asked John clearing his throat, “is this Kenny Lombard the robber?”

“Mmmmmm? No, of course not, but I wasn’t sure of his implication, if any, in those robberies. I’m not still a hundred per cent sure, mind you, but I have enough evidence to ask for an official interrogation.”

John tried to link that to the bits of information that he managed to extract from Sherlock the day before. “But the git always has to retain something to show off and come across as a fucking superhero”, he thought, grinning.

As they came in the Scotland Yard premises, though, their good mood got mudded by the amount of looks they received. It’s not that Sherlock wasn’t used to getting attention, mind you, but they were usually angry looks, disdainful ones, and a few admiring ones. He was startled to find the normally scornful head clerk shooting him a definitely dirty glare. Or the officers from the Fraud Department smirking knowingly. As soon as they arrived to Lestrade’s Department, a rain of applauses greeted them. John hadn’t felt as embarrassed in his life. Some of the sergeants he knew went as far as to clap his back and congratulate him. Nobody dare to do so to Sherlock, even though he could felt a lot of feminine eyes set on him until he closed Lestrade’s door at his back.

The D.I. smiled sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, guys, I asked them not to do it, but…”

“Yes, we know, they got carried away”, Sherlock finished. “We are not here to discuss this topic; if you are all so idiotic that you choose to believe that John and I are involved into an intimate relationship of sorts, then I’ll leave you to your miserable tiny brains. We are here to provide you with a new lead to close the robberies case.”

Lestrade’s face lighted up as a Christmas tree.

“Seriously? Well, if that’s true you two can fuck as much as you like, and I promise that I will never even raise an eyebrow!”

John sighed loudly.

“Greg, for the last time, Sherlock and I are not fucking! That video was a porn film tampered to look as if they were us!”

“Oh, who worries about the video any more?” He looked a bit guilty before asking: “Have you seen the fanarts?”

Sherlock nodded; John raised his hands in surrender and turned to look out the window.

“Don’t be so upset, John, sorry… I just thought they were cute, and that you two together… well, let’s talk about the case, eh?”

“Yes, it would be a better use of our time”, Sherlock replied coldly. “There’s a cleaning employee, Kenny Lombard, who has worked for five of the seven victims. The last of them I just checked today: he was fired a month ago and I didn’t have enough data to link him to all the flats.”

Lestrade frowned, writing down the name.

“Is he the robber, then? What about the other two flats?”

“He is not the robber, but I think he was the one who provided the key to the actual robber. I’m not sure about his knowing what was going on, though, so I need you to call him here for interrogation.”

Lestrade wrote down the rest of the suspect’s details and thanked Sherlock. They crossed the building in slightly better mood that at their entrance, but the glares carried on all the time. Sherlock insisted in taking a cab for their way back home, too, and for once John said nothing of how wasteful his friend was.

During the short ride, he went through the contents of his kitchen cabinets in his mind, and found out that they had nothing to make a proper dinner. He suggested Sherlock dropping by Speedy’s to eat something before going home; the detective frowned but accepted. So when the cab stopped in front of 221B, they went inside Speedy’s and asked for the day’s special. John realised how hungry he was and made quick work of his food, but Sherlock kept on fiddling with his steak and ale pie and poking the mush and gravy with his fork, instead of actually eating it.

“Sherlock”, John said at last, annoyed. “Can’t you just eat it, please? It’s good.”

“It’s _greasy_. Why can’t we have a nice home-cooked meal as the other day?”

John’s annoyance dissolved as if it never had existed. He answered with a tiny smile:

“I haven’t gone to Tesco since Monday, I’m sorry. I promise tomorrow we will have a proper dinner at home, cooked by the best cook of 221B Baker Street. Well, that is, the best after Mrs. Hudson, of course.”

Sherlock smiled back and got up to pay for their dinner. When they were out the door, though, John added:

“But I want something in exchange.”

His friend turned to look at him, expectant.

“You haven’t played the violin for me since all this mess started.”

Sherlock smiled fondly and leaned towards John. The doctor felt his heart skip a bit; for a moment, he thought Sherlock was going to kiss him right then and there, in the street, in front of his door, where Mrs. Hudson and all their neighbours could see them. But no.

Sherlock suddenly straightened up, his eyes looking everywhere but at John, and turned to open their door. John felt something alike disappointing fleeting in his stomach.

That evening, Sherlock complied and played the violin while John read a novel, feeling warm and cosy in his old armchair. He raised his eyes from the book from time to time, and wondered why any of those damn fanarts had captured Sherlock in that moment, playing the violin with his eyes closed, as ethereal that he seemed about to float.

Later, alone in his room, he deigned to look to the drawings again. _Cute_ , according to Lestrade, thought John with a crooked grin. Most of them weren’t at all what John would call cute. His eyes got caught on one picture of Sherlock and him kissing, though, and he could accept, _perhaps_ , that it was nice: well drawn, and the surprised look on Sherlock’s face was definitely something. Without thinking, he typed on the “ask” button of the artist’s Tumblr blog and wrote an anonymous request: “Could you draw Sherlock playing the violin and looking as an angel?”. He pressed ‘send’ and felt stupid all of a sudden, but he shrugged the feeling and got ready for bed.

 

 

 

 


	6. Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, really sorry for the delay!   
> Thank you for the nice comments and the encouragement!

**_Saturday_ **

****

The rattle of rain awoke John before his alarm clock went off. He got up from bed and looked out the window: the morning light was sorely lacking, Baker Street was washed by a curtain of rain, and a distant thunder rumbled southward. John sighed: it was the kind of day he liked to spend staying at home, cosy and warm, watching old films, reading and drinking tea. But today’s schedule included an early interrogation at Scotland Yard, so much for that.

He knocked on Sherlock’s door on his way to the bathroom.

“Sherlock! We have to be at Scotland Yard at half past eight, wake up!”

He went through his customary routines in a rush and put their coffees in plastic cups. Sherlock appeared at the sitting room neatly dressed, combed and shaved just in time. He took his cup and sipped it, smiling at the awful weather at the other side of the window.

“You’ve got to love the British weather”.

“Yeah, I’m sure all the colonies envy us…”, retorted John, annoyed. “Why are you on such a good mood, anyway?”

Sherlock turned and got into his coat, all graceful and smooth movements.

“The case is almost closed, John! How should I feel if not joyful? Come on, the cab is here, hurry up!”

And John grabbed his jacket and his umbrella, feeling like a shabby shadow of his friend. They arrived to Scotland Yard in time and tried to ignore the glares and the smirks their passing arose. With their dignity only half intact, they met Lestrade out his office.

“Ah, here you are! Lombard is already at the interrogation room. You can watch from the annex room. And Sherlock? Are you sure Lombard is not the thief? You haven’t even met him!”

“Ninety five per cent sure”, Sherlock whispered, barely paying attention to them and walking forward. “Focus the questions on finding out if the man had a grudge against the victims, and then on whom he commented on his annoyance. Someone who had access to the flats’ keys.”

Half an hour later, they finally had a name. Sherlock ran out of the small room, leaving John behind, his fingers flying over his phone.

“A computer! Fast! Donovan, let me use your computer, _now!_ ”

Sally Donovan’s forehead was suddenly adorned with a rather ugly straight line, and she did not move in order to obey. Sherlock stamped his foot like a disgruntled toddler and turned, frustrated, looking for help. Luckily, John and Lestrade finally appeared, coming out from the interrogation room.

“Lestrade! I need a computer, quickly!”

“Sherlock, what the hell…? You can’t use the Yard equipment; tell me what you hope to find out using the computer and my team will look for it.”

The frustration on Sherlock’s face was painful to watch. John could tell that his friend was trying desperately to stop his mind for a moment and form words, explain his train of thought, but it was a Herculean task for him. When he couldn’t stand it any more, John stepped forward and put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, squeezing. Sherlock seemed to come out of his struggle and breathed deeply once:

“Lombard and two other cleaners, Jackson Smith and Sarah Lewis, used to go to the same person to make copies of the keys of the flats they got assigned to clean. It’s Locks&Smith, on The Strand, near the cleaning service companies they worked in. The owner, Will Gordon, found himself with a nice bunch of labelled keys, all of them belonging to expensive flats in Central London. When Lombard complained about his employers, Gordon decided it was too good to let it pass: he could rob the flats without forcing the entry and he had a useful scapegoat, too… He didn’t think the police would link him to the robberies, not when having Lombard at hand. And now could you please look for Will Gordon’s details? We need his address, and you should check if he’s rented a storehouse lately.”

Lestrade opened his mouth to reply, but no word came out.

“Amazing!”

All the eyes in the wide room turned to look at John, who started to feel warmth creeping up his cheeks as the eyes began to be accompanied by knowing grins. Lestrade reacted quickly, clearing his throat.

“Well! Let’s do it before he escapes, shall we? Donovan, look for it!”

“The storehouse should be located near the river.”

“I’ve got it!”, Donovan shouted, her nose close to the computer’s screen. “In Dartford, in the Southbank! He rented it three months ago.”

“Text me the address!”, Sherlock answered, marching with wide strides towards the door.

“Wait, Sherlock!”, Lestrade said, running after the detective. “Leave it to us now, there’s no need you keep being involved.”

“Send a car to his address and another to the storehouse; I’ll go to Dartford on my own. I mean, with John, of course.”

And he was off the building in a snap, with John at his heels.

The cab left them in a deserted street, with warehouses at both sides and absolutely nowhere to shelter from the violent rain. The umbrella John carried was insufficient, and Sherlock resorted to hide his neck inside his coat collar. John tried to shelter his friend, but he was too tall for John’s umbrella, and they both were soaked before they arrived to the storehouse’s door.

“Well, genius, what now?”

John’s mood was not at his best. The fact that the thunders sounded much closer wasn’t helping.

“We find an accessible window and we enter. I thought you had figured it out, John, honestly…”

“I feared something like that, yes… Couldn’t we just wait here for Lestrade’s men? They will arrive in a moment…”

“I dare say that we have ten minutes before they are here. Let’s make good use of that time, come on! Turn left… No, my left!”

John threw the useless umbrella away and grunted. Sherlock’s fringe hung graceless down his forehead and cheekbones, and John imagined he looked very much the same. The sooner they solved this, the sooner they would be dry and comfortable at home.

“This window looks good enough for me, Sherlock.”

“OK, hitch me up, I’ll enter.”

“What?! No way, Sherlock, I’m lighter than you, I should be the one who…”

“Stop complaining and hurry up, I’m soaked!”

John complied while muttering about sodding stubborn detectives; Sherlock climbed the high window, stood on the window sill and forced the opening. Only the upper half of the window opened, so he had to jump and slither through the narrow space. John heard him fall down on the other side with a loud “Bump”. “Nice thump”, he thought, suddenly glad of being the one outside the building.

Then he looked around him, and noticed, feeling rather stupid, that he was alone in the street, among low storehouses and the odd truck passing, the skies had opened and the rain was thick, lightings flashing quite often, and Sherlock was, again, fighting the baddies on his own. He had every right to be fuming, right? But just when he decided that yes, indeed he had, a loud shot resounded, slightly muffled by the storm but still pretty audible. John ran towards the main door, just in time to almost catch a man who was escaping from the building. The man was agile and quick, and broke away from John’s grabbing hand with a swift twirl.

“John!! Go after him!”

John lost precious seconds turning to look for Sherlock, and there he was, getting up from behind a pile of wood boxes, but seemingly uninjured. He started to chase the criminal at full speed, and a moment later he could hear Sherlock’s steps behind him. The burglar was fast, but John managed to get closer to him a couple of times. Unfortunately, the man shook him off as a slippery snake and jumped over a fence inside the Littlebrook power station complex. Swearing, John followed him, realising that he couldn’t hear Sherlock any more, and where the hell was he now? Was he injured after all? John tried to focus in the sneaky man running ahead, and chased him around one of those huge round concrete tanks; but the burglar was nowhere to be seen when he reached the back of the building. He stopped for a second, trying to regain his breath and wipe the rain off his face. The day was so grey that it was difficult to figure out anything beyond a hundred of yards. A sudden movement behind the next tank caught his eye, and he made a run for it. He bumped into a dark form, belatedly realising that the shape fitted Sherlock’s coat.

“John!”, the detective growled. “Don’t tackle me! You are letting the criminal escape!”

“Not in purpose”, John groaned, rubbing his poor shoulder. God, the man was as hard as a rock.

“He’s over there! Run! On your right!”

And John sped up around other tank, chasing a barely there shadow; he hoped Sherlock was right, though.

This time, when he collided with a coated shape, it was indeed the burglar! The detective knocked the man from the other side and John grabbed the criminal’s arms and made him trip up and hit the ground. He kneeled by his side, feeling that only the adrenaline kept him going so far under the cold rain, and looked up to his friend with a wide smile.

“What now?”

* * *

 

And what came then were the police sirens and a lot of sudden talking and movement. The boys endured it, each one in his style (Sherlock managing to look bored even in those circumstances, John sneezing and attracting all the yarders sympathy, especially the female ones), and they were finally allowed to go home in a cab, with the promise of making their statements next Monday morning. John, then, remembered something and made the cab stop at the nearest Tesco to Baker Street. Sherlock smiled and said nothing. Well, at that moment, at last. He made a lot of witty remarks once they were inside the supermarket, following a long-suffering John who tried to ignore him for the sake of the rest of Tesco’s costumers.

So it was already afternoon when they at last reached 221B Baker Street, both of them carrying groceries plastic bags and soaked and shivering again, but they had a nasty surprise before they could climb the stairs to their dry and cosy flat. A bunch of colourful umbrellas were waiting for them outside their building.

The umbrellas (well, not they, but their owners) started to squeak as soon as they saw Sherlock and John.

“Oh my God, they are there!!”

“Aaaaaw, look, they come from the supermarket!”

“So domestic! How cute!”

The doctor stared in awe as the girls quickly surrounded them, yelling their names and trying to _grab_ him. Sherlock kept on walking past the wall of fangirls, and John reacted and followed him inside the building.

“What the hell was that?”, he grunted. “Sherlock, this is out of control!”

The flat was dark and cold, unaware that it was only October and not winter at all. They left the bags on the kitchen’s floor and John busied himself putting the food away. Then he hung their wet coats in the bathroom and made tea for them. Nice, _hot_ tea was definitely in order, and right away. He found Sherlock in the still dark sitting room, watching out the window half hidden behind the curtains. He turned to meet John’s eyes.

“They have left.”

“Thank God! I need a tea, a shower, a nice early dinner and a quiet evening with a book and a blanket.”

Sherlock smiled and turned again towards the street. He was still completely soggy, his curls falling limp but still graceful over his nose and cheekbones. John joined him at the window, peeping out and making sure the damned fans were really gone. They were. He was gazing at the empty, wet street, and the dark huge clouds above it, when a sudden thunder rumbled exactly over them, and he was so close to Sherlock that he could feel him shudder. John looked at him, and a lightning illuminated Sherlock’s profile. The detective felt John’s eyes fixed in him and turned to look at his friend: they were mere inches away.

None of them could have sworn who was the one to initiate the movement, but suddenly their lips were touching, and if they felt any surprise at all, it was gone before one could say “kiss”.

But it was Sherlock who first deepened the kiss, that part was certain. And it was John who pushed his friend backwards until he was half sitting on the window sill. The frequent thunders shushed their first moans, so afterwards they accused each other of being the loudest. They agreed, though, that both of them lowered their hands at the same time, as they met in their way to each other’s belt. Both gasped when their trousers dropped and their cold and wet flesh met the still cold air of the flat, but the inconvenience only lasted a few seconds, until their hands managed to conjure enough heat for their partner’s comfort.

Sherlock’s skin was wet and with goose bumps when John unbuttoned his shirt but, in turn, he allowed his friend to get rid of his jumper as well: all in all, all their clothes were sodden, so there was no need to keep them. In a minute, though, both of them were engaged in the hard work of warming each other with hands and lips, and the cold glass of the window was exchanged by the cosier surface of John’s armchair. The ex-army doctor and currently consulting detective assistant /flatmate /lover thought of moving the action to the bedroom, but that habitation looked suddenly incredibly far, so he contented himself turning Sherlock around and bending him slightly over the back of the armchair. As they were still standing, that put them more or less at the same height (John realised, delighted), so he could kiss Sherlock’s nape and elicit those moans that even the thunders couldn’t hide any more. Their hands met again, over Sherlock’s deliciously hard member.

“We aren’t moving any further, then?”, Sherlock gasped.

“Good deduction”, John grunted.

“Let me turn; I can’t touch you this way!”

Sherlock sounded quite desperate, but John had a one and only image burnt in his retina, and he couldn’t think in anything else: that gif of fake him mounting fake Sherlock had been teasing him for days, and he was now so close to bring that image to real life… He rubbed his prick along Sherlock’s crease and down his balls, and God! That was good! He did it again, but then the head of his cock got caught between Sherlock’s thighs, and his friend _squeezed_ it, and it wasn’t good, it was heaven! He managed to establish a rhythm, one hand working with Sherlock’s one and the other embracing his wiry silky waist, pumping between Sherlock’s thighs.

The detective soon lost the rhythm, his breath laboured and his face obscured by the wet curls falling over his front, and John’s cock slipped out of his cocoon. Desperate, John rubbed it against Sherlock’s arse again, feeling his pleasure skyrocketing. And exactly then the head decided to get caught again, and John’s mouth went dry all of a sudden when he looked down and saw exactly _where_ it was trapped: the tiny hole swallowed almost all of John’s head. He watched, enraptured, while he thrust again and the hole sucked in his first shot of come. He pushed into his hand and sent the rest of his come over Sherlock’s bum, and that part was so similar to the video that he couldn’t help to grin, pleased.

“John!”, Sherlock shouted, and a shaky groan trembled through him. John held him tight, his chest completely glued to Sherlock’s pale back, and only when he seemed recovered John let him go, giving him a bit of space. Sherlock turned and placed his forehead on John’s shoulder, still shaking. But John could feel his friend’s matching smile. He took Sherlock’s face in his hands and kissed him.

“Good?”, Sherlock asked, almost shyly.

“Good?”, John repeated, smiling widely. “It was the hottest thing I’ve ever done!”

“But better than the video?”

Both laughed and embraced each other. After a moment, Sherlock added:

“You said you wanted a hot shower.”

His eyes were shining with mischief, and John grinned and slapped his arse playfully.

“Sure! I want it still more now, in fact!”

And they chased each other to the bathroom, thinking more or less the same: a nice quiet evening in 221b Baker Street was the best way to spend a stormy Saturday.

 

 

 


	7. Sunday

**_Sunday_ **

****

The alarm clock went off at 8 am, as always, and John rubbed his eyes and thought: 1. Why didn’t he ever remember to turn the damned thing off on Sundays? And 2. Was last evening a dream? A gentle hum near his ear and a hand creeping up his chest told him he wasn’t dreaming after all, and John relaxed and considered how incredibly perfect had yesterday been: the surprise sex, the nice and long shower, then bed and more sex, this time slowly and more adventurous. At some point they fell asleep, and then their empty stomachs woke them up at two in the morning, and John made his promised (and forgotten) special dinner: gourmet mushroom risotto, garlic bread and apple pie. They had their late dinner sitting at the kitchen, smiling like idiots and stealing from each other’s plate.

“Can we have breakfast in bed?”, Sherlock whispered.

“If you wish… Let me go and I will prepare it.”

Sherlock laughed and gripped him tightly. John tickled him on the ribs and at last freed himself. He kissed Sherlock again and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Sherlock’s phone went off, and the detective picked it up with a sigh.

“Mycroft. How kind of you waking me up on a Sunday morning… To what do I owe the displeasure?”

“I thought you would like to get rid of this nuisance as soon as possible… but I had to check first if you or your… emm, _dear_ flatmate had been the one who posted it on the first place. And yes, of course, silly me, good morning, Sherlock!”

“What are you talking about? What nuisance?”. Sherlock got up from bed and started pacing the narrow bedroom. Talking to his brother before breakfast always made him crave for a cigarette.

“The video, of course.”

“That’s old news by now… We are getting used to our new fame, by the way. Have you seen the fanarts? Some of them are quite creative…”

“Old news? Have you checked Youtube today?”

Sherlock felt his throat dry and sandy all of a sudden. John’s laptop was on his nightstand, looking all innocent. He opened and rebooted it.

“Wait a second.”

He typed Youtube on the browser, and then, again, his own name on the search tab. A new video popped up: “Sherlock and John, the real thing” was the title. When he clicked on it, a familiar scene appeared on the screen. It wasn’t a bedroom this time. It was a well known fireplace, two familiar armchairs, a window whipped by the rain… and they undressing each other and kissing in the gloom. Sherlock had a sudden crash of contradictory feelings and a chain of quick thoughts. Anger. Scream. Smashing hidden cameras. Smashing some stranger’s head. Fun. Arousal. Lick John’s sweat.

“Sherlock? Are you still there?”, Mycroft interrupted. “I don’t really think you are the one who uploaded this video, but I can’t be a hundred per cent sure of Doctor Watson… Of course, if none of you have been the one, I must assume full responsibility for the actions of my team, since this has been clearly recorded by one of the security cameras installed in your flat… not for this purpose, I must reassert: it was never my intention to spy on your privacy, and this leak is the opposite to my goal, insomuch as it compromises your security…”

Sherlock hung up, smiling, put the closed laptop under his arm, took a screwdriver from a drawer and went downstairs humming Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

 


End file.
